After Exercise 'iron Maiden' Poem by Roy Ballard

Our APC's come lumbering off the hills
where deer go through the air like arrows
and foxes, furtive, insolent and rash
come out to saunter by the iron tracks
that grind relentlessly and gash and groove
raw trenches for the airborne willow herb,
dropping to score each twinned and bleeding slash
in strokes of crimson; marking out attacks
and feints where armour charged and churned again
in lines of flowers on the silent Plain.

Worthy for battle but not good for roads,
once off the Plain we have to stop and wait.
I try to get the Mess Fund added up
where cherry blossom overhangs a gate
and girls have come to see the uniforms,
as ever, but… Sweet Helen at the well!
Here's something special in the way of girls.
'Five minutes' sighs a corporal.
'At least an hour' says Sarge and grins at me;
he wants to know how long.
Five minutes or a fateful score of years
hell-bent with fatal Helen. Stop your ears.
Here is a muse. There's weight in what she brings.
She brings with her a fist of Grecian spears.
Beware! You'll choose the burden that she sings
and be forever deaf to every song.
So live in quiet places, dull and long
or be embattled, trampled as you die
your name blazed out in trumpets where you lie.